Mile
Zero

February 25, 2006

On the left, my new bass. On the right, what was almost my new bass. Not
to scale.

The winner is a Line 6 Variax, which is one of their digital modeling
basses. Line 6 has made a name for themselves by creating very good
simulations of amplifiers (the Pod) and effects (my looper, the DL-4, is
actually their emulation of a dozen delay pedals). The Variax is
supposed to do the same thing for guitars, by picking up the sound from a
piezoelectric pickup built into the bridge and processing it until it
sounds like one of many vintage or inconvenient (upright or acoustic bass)
instruments.

The loser is a Malden Motorbass, an exercise in stripped-down bass
minimalism, which appeals to me. It's got just one single-coil pickup,
which is all I ever use anyway, and one volume knob, because I leave the
tone on the All-Star all the way up. I like the look of the Motorbass,
too. What tipped the decision away from it was that first, it doesn't
actually give me anything I don't already have, and second, it's built
like a Precision bass, which means it's meant more for solid, simple rock
basslines. I think I'd regret buying it after a week, because it doesn't
really fit with where I want to go musically except in the
minimalism.

The Variax is interesting, though, from a kind of cultural standpoint.
After all, there's no more superstitious market than guitar players. By
nature, most of them are wary of digital technology to begin with, so it
was probably due to go down like a ton of bricks anyway. But even still,
this is a piece of hardware that incorporates some extremely sophisticated
electronics. Guitar players can even use software to completely customize
the models, and on the Variax bass you can move the virtual pickup on
single-pickup basses (like the Stingray or a P-Bass) back and forward on
the model, which is pretty sophisticated. And yet, with all this
technology, it's still being used to imitate a bunch of instruments
averaging about thirty years old.

You can argue that there are both positive and negative aspects to this
fact. The best part of modelling, either through Line 6 or through
companies like Digitech, is that it gives players on a budget access to a
wide variety of tones (with greater or lesser levels of realism). Most
people don't have the money for a '71 Rickenbacker or a '69 Fender, so
it's nice if they can sound that way for not a lot of cash. But on the
other hand, this fetishization of the past can be one of the great blind
spots of popular music. After all, when digital audio recording first
showed up, engineers used it as nothing more than a limited version of
tape. It was only when people left the restraints of that paradigm behind
that digital audio really became more interesting, and more sophisticated
production began to take off.

Either way, I'm looking forward to using the Line 6 as a recording bass,
since its power requirements may make it a bit cumbersome live. In those
situations, I'll still have the All-Star. It's a bit more photogenic
anyway. But if I were really going for looks, check out this modification that takes the
Variax guts and puts them in a custom-made exotic wood body. If only I
owned more machine tools, and a work room to put them in...